This invention relates generally to appliances and, more particularly, to refrigerators including refrigerator-freezer combinations that provide storage accessibility and dispensing capability from more than one side of the refrigerator.
A refrigerator is a large cabinet unit used to keep food and drinks cool and fresh. The majority of homes have a pre-defined refrigerator area into which a refrigerator-freezer unit is inserted and, typically, access to the refrigerator is limited to the area directly in front of the refrigerator. This makes it difficult for more than one person to access the refrigerator at the same time. Thus, growing families and large residential group homes often have traffic jams at the refrigerator where several people at the same time are attempting to obtain a cold drink or open the doors to retrieve something inside.
In recent years, refrigerators have been designed with through-the-door ice and beverage dispensers. These units are not only convenient for the user, but they also conserve energy by allowing access to ice and water without opening a refrigerator door, thereby maintaining a constant temperature and not causing warm, moist air to enter or cold air to escape the refrigerator. Typically, consumer ice dispensers are located in a freezer compartment door and have a damper door that restricts warm moist air from entering the freezer compartment. The user requests crushed or cubed ice by exerting pressure against a switch mechanism, usually with a drinking glass, which causes the damper door to remain open. When the glass is sufficiently full, the user removes the pressure from the mechanism and the damper door closes. The user can also procure refrigerated or chilled water using a similar procedure after manually setting an electric switch to the beverage mode. However, while such units are convenient and conserve energy, they do not significantly increase accessibility to the refrigerator.
What is needed is a refrigerator design that increases accessibility to the refrigerator while maintaining the energy efficiency achieved with the through-the-door ice and beverage dispensers.